


Zero Generation

by K_dAzrael



Series: Savages!verse [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Intercrural Sex, Light Bondage, M/M, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6985828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I’m just supposed to tag along so you can gossip and drink and smoke yourself stupid with the old boy network?”</p><p>Hux lowers his datapad and gives Ren a look of exasperated disbelief. “Are you actually jealous that I have a friend?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to [kylostahp](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com) for serving as Trulaw's wardrobe advisor and drawing this frankly heartbreaking picture of [Cadet Knight](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com/post/144769728992/hello-yes-i-would-like-to-make-a-complaint-against). Also, shout-out to [lingua-mortua](http://lingua-mortua.tumblr.com) for listening to my whining about the parts that were haaaard!

**17 ABY – NEC-52, Outer Rim territories**

Hux leans across the air-conditioning unit and plucks the cigarra from between Trulaw’s fingers. “I don’t want to know what you had to do to get this.”

“Oh, no – old Stepfort’s past all that. He just likes me to sit next to him like a good, attentive boy while he fondles his imperial medals and shows me pictures of his long-dead friends. ‘Oh yes, sir,’ I say. ‘You were all so handsome in your dark grey uniforms. Oh _yes_ , sir, you truly were the greatest generation. We’ll never see those days again!’ Then when he gets teary-eyed enough I can just reach for the cigarra box and grab myself a fistful.”

Hux takes his first drag, grimaces. “I’m not sure that isn’t _worse_ than what I was imagining.”

Trulaw laughs. “Thank the stars we can begin to put this all behind us. Corellia may be full of crooks and hypocrites, but at least it’s well supplied with tabac.”  

“You don’t have to go back there. You could come with me, after.”

“I’m deeply flattered, Hux, but no.”

“The Order isn’t a cult, you know. And they need competent, ambitious men.”

Trulaw raises a pale eyebrow. “They’re a bunch of bloody warlords with a flag and you know it. Besides,” he narrows his eyes as he gazes off across the featureless terrain, “this morning when I got dressed I made a vow. I looked at myself in the mirror and said ‘ _As the stars are my witness I will never wear drab again!_ ’”

Hux tilts back his head to blow out a thin stream of smoke. “You’re really going back to the Core? After what your family did to you – sending you out here to suffer and starve?”

“The way I see it, they did me a favour. You might think you know psychological torture, but you’ve never sat down to afternoon tea with my mother.” Trulaw reaches over and takes back the cigarra.

“What are you going to do there in Corellia – apart from smoke yourself sick?”

The cigarra twitches upwards in the corner of Trulaw’s mouth as his lips pull into a smile. “I’m going to live, Huxy boy. I’m going to live.” 

Hux laughs. “I’m sure you will.”

“I won’t ask you what _you’ll_ do. Go off and sort out those rag-tag neo-imperials, I bet – make them hop to it. The whole bloody Outer Rim is your Dorm 6 now.” Trulaw turns his head at the sound of the security door rattling open. Knight strides across the roof and then abruptly stops, rocking back onto his heels with a look of uncertainty. Trulaw rolls his eyes. “It’s alright Erril. There isn’t anything queer going on.”

Knight sticks his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders. “I didn’t think that.”

Trulaw hands off the cigarra again and lets smoke trickle out through his nose. “Do you require a private audience with our fearless leader?”

“No. I mean, I just wanted to say my parents are here and we’re getting ready to leave. So, um,” he raises his head and looks directly at Hux. “You could come down and say hello, if you wanted.”

“And goodbye,” Trulaw adds, softly.

Knight drops his gaze. “Yeah.”

“I’m busy,” Hux says.

“Alright,” Knight exhales and it sounds soft, defeated. “Well, we’ll be on the landing pad until seventeen-thirty if you change your mind. Goodbye Trulaw. Goodbye Hux. It was an honour knowing you.”

“Goodbye, Knight,” Trulaw replies, a fond, amused twinkle in his eyes. “O you most faithful retainer; you midwife to the new empire.”

Knight salutes, give Hux once last fearful, yearning look and turns to go. The door closes behind him with a resounding clang. 

Trulaw looks at the closed door and shakes his head. “Why you never put him out of his misery by grabbing those ridiculous ears and having your way with him, I’ll never know.” He pulls up his sleeve and consults the chrono on his wrist. “Maybe it’s not too late – still twenty minutes left ‘til launch.”

“Don’t be disgusting, Trulaw,” Hux snaps.

“Oh _what_? Like you never considered it.”   

“Knight isn’t interested in men, and I’m not interested in gawky idiots.”

“Mmhmm.”

“You’re the one with a weakness for oblivious straight boys.”

“Oh _what_?”

“You know what.”

Trulaw’s expression darkens; he gazes off to one side and lets out a long, uneven breath. Then he rubs his jaw self-consciously, eyes darting up to Hux’s face, and says: “listen. Can you look out for him?”

Hux returns his gaze warily. “I don’t know. Saff signed up to a different training programme: he didn’t have the grades for the fast-track officership.”

“But if you’re ever in a position to do something for him, you will, won’t you?”

Hux tosses the cigarra butt away and slowly exhales the last of the smoke. He nods.

“Thank-you,” Trulaw says quietly. He looks up, some of the sardonic humour coming back into his expression. “Now I’m going to do you one last favour.”

Hux raises his eyebrows, glances down at his own lap.

“No, not that. Well, maybe that later – but right now, I’m going to give you some extremely valuable advice.”

Hux gazes at him levelly. “Go on, then.”

Trulaw jabs a finger at him. “Don’t be a shitheel. Go and say goodbye to Knight – say something nice to his parents. It won’t cost you a thing, but it’ll mean the galaxy to him.”

Hux crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t see how that’s useful to me.”

Trulaw claps him on the shoulder and narrows his bright hazel eyes. “You’re going to have a hard climb ahead of you. It won’t be easy and it won’t be safe. So when you’re under heavy enemy fire, crouching in a water-logged foxhole on some Sith-forsaken planet and wondering what it’s all been for, I want you to be able to look back over your selfish little life and say ‘I did a good thing, once.’ So go on already, do your one good deed.”

Hux groans, jumps off the unit and stretches. “Alright, fine. But you’d better make it worth my while, Trulaw.”

Trulaw pulls another cigarra out of his breast pocket and sticks it between his lips. “Don’t I always, though?”

*~*~*

Hux strides quickly across the landing pad, weaving between groups of cadets and their proud families, many of the latter in their old Imperial uniforms or the current ones of the regime in exile (which follow much the same aesthetic, if reproduced imperfectly and with lower-quality fabrics). He spots Knight easily, as he is still among the tallest of the students. He is standing with a middle-aged couple, presumably his parents. The woman is small and frail-looking, her dark hair threaded with grey and tied back in a bun. She has a ruddy complexion and large, anxious grey eyes. The man is tall – as tall as his son – and his skin is pale and freckled. Like his son, he also has a broad frame that seems like it ought to be bulky and muscular, given the right nutrition and resources, but he is thin and hollow-cheeked, giving him a rather deflated look.

The couple wear civilian clothing in inconspicuous, neutral tones. The garments were probably in fashion somewhere in the mid-Rim over a decade ago; a weddings and high-holidays best that has been carefully stored away, in the hope that there will one day be cause for celebration. Knight senior wears a military greatcoat over his shoulders, but whatever rank insignia it once bore has been carefully pared away from the sleeves.

“Knight,” Hux calls out, lifting a hand as he approaches.

Knight looks up at him and returns the wave, his expression smoothing out and the corner of his mouth lifting. “Oh, hi,” he says. “Mom, dad, this is my friend Hux.”

“Oh,” says the woman, smiling a little weakly, “we’ve heard so much about you.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Knight,” Hux takes her hand and presses it. She looks into his eyes in an earnest, searching way. Her hand feels small and dry, almost insubstantial.

“Corporal Vern Knight,” says the older man. He does not offer his gloved hand and he holds his shoulder stiffly, making Hux think the limb is either frozen, or a prosthetic. 

Hux salutes. “Thank-you for your service, sir.”

Corporal Knight gives a dismissive grunt. “That was quite the speech you gave earlier, son. ‘The zero generation’ – never thought of it that way. I don’t know what’s worse – knowing the glory days and losing them, or never having known them at all.” The older man has eyes of a very pale, glassy blue and they don’t focus on Hux’s face when he talks, instead wandering in a slow sweep across the scene. He seems absent, disinterested somehow – even in his own words, which emerge from his mouth blank and uninflected.

“I don’t know, sir,” Hux replies. “I try to think about the future.”

The corporal grunts again. “You’re young, I suppose that’s your right. Hux, your name is? Your father was something, wasn’t he?”

“He was commandant of the academy on Arkanis, before the concordance.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. I wasn’t at Arkanis myself – didn’t come up that way, not the right kind of family – but I heard it was the best of the best. Do you remember it?”

“Not the academy, sir. I remember a little of the planet. Mostly the rain, and the sea.”

“Your father approve of how they do things here?”

“I couldn’t say,” Hux feels annoyed, but he’s not sure what about – the corporal’s bluntness, perhaps, or his unerring instinct for a sore spot. “He accepts the shift in priorities.”

“Oh? Where is he now?”

“That’s classified, sir. Not even I know.”

Corporal Knight’s lip twitches in what Hux thinks is amusement. “Yes, I hear there’s a brave new world out there in the Unknown Regions. Who knows what they’re up to out there, or what’ll ever see the light of day?”

“Vern,” Mrs Knight says chidingly, putting a hand to her husband’s good arm. She looks up at Hux, the directness of her gaze seeking to compensate for the wavering of her husband’s. “What’s next for you, young man?”

“An officer’s programme aboard the _Avenger_.”

Corporal Knight gives a disbelieving bark of laughter at this. “Is that old junker still running?”

“Erril is going into diplomacy,” Mrs Knight interjects. “He’s very good at languages.”

“Is he?” Hux glances over at Knight, who rubs a hand over the back of his neck self-consciously.

“I’m ok at them,” he mumbles.

“He just wants to stay close to that girl – Lorna.”

“ _Lina_ , dad. Her name is Lina.”

“I don’t think it makes any damn sense to get tied down at your age,” the corporal continues. “You have a girlfriend, Hux?”

“No, sir.”

“Good lad. Nothing but trouble.”

Mrs Knight rolls her eyes, takes her husband’s sleeve and shakes it. “Come along dear, let’s go up to the shuttle. I’m sure Erril wants to say goodbye to his friend without us cramping his style.”

“Thanks for coming down. Sorry about them. My dad gets kind of…” Knight trails off, either embarrassed to say something disparaging about his father, or lacking the words to encompass the oddness and absence there.

“What happened to his arm – did he lose it in combat?”

“No, he’s an engineer. It was an equipment malfunction. The injury wasn’t too bad at first, but you know – the bacta shortage.”

Hux frowns and changes the subject: “I didn’t know you were going into diplomacy.”

Knight shrugs one shoulder. “It looks interesting.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Yeah. You too, though you don’t need it.”

They regard one another warily. It has been a week of farewells: an emptying out of lockers, rooms, and friendships. A handshake or an awkward, back-thumping hug is conventional, along with a promise of future reunions, half-hearted offers and open-ended plans. The galaxy is a big place, they know, and the exiles are scattered far and wide; they are all drifting out in spirals from the big bang of their crisis, eighteen years ago, in the skies above Yavin 4.

“Goodbye Knight,” Hux says, as evenly and casually as he can.

“Goodbye General. It really was an honour.” Knight clicks his heels together and salutes, then he turns smartly and makes his way towards the ramp of the shuttle.

*~*~*

Hux hangs in the doorway as he takes in the room, once infinitesimally-known, now rendered bleak and unfamiliar. The blankets and bedding are gone, empty rectangles of clean floor mark where footlockers used to stand. Cord has left behind one of his boots under a bunk and it looks eerie, its battered leather still holding the shape of its owner’s foot like a ghostly echo of his presence.

“And only we two remain?” Trulaw remarks, glancing up when Hux finally crosses the threshold. Hux notes, as if for the first time, that peculiar way of speaking Trulaw has: as if everything he says is a quotation – already second-hand, already ironized. He is sitting on his bunk, the only bed not yet stripped. His body is angled away from the window as he carefully folds a pair of uniform trousers.

Hux closes the door, hits the locking mechanism that was never supposed to work from the inside (but does, thanks to Yungkai’s canny rewiring). He turns, orienting himself in the space, and swallows a sinking feeling. Small and depressing as it is, the dormitory is _their_ domain – and now it will lie empty and silent, until the next batch arrives. Other bodies will jostle to fill the space; other voices echo against the walls; other hands smear their prints across the surfaces, covering all traces of the former occupants.

Berkal has a thing about numbers no-one will ever know: all the finite things that go quietly unnoticed and unrecorded. The number of footsteps Hux has taken in this room, the number of times he has climbed the ladder of his bunk – the final figures exist somewhere out there in abstract space, but they will never be reckoned. Berkal keeps a journal of these things – a file of mysterious tallies on his datapad, the figures meticulously updated and fiercely guarded. Once, Berkal neglected to back it up before a sudden major power outage and he had a meltdown. Saff had to sit with him in a storage cupboard counting objects and subdivisions thereof: bottles of cleaning fluids and the lines and letters on their labels; creases in an old raincoat. Later, Yungkai found a way to restore the file.

“There are a couple of our lot left over in Two,” Hux says, in belated answer to the other man’s question. “Gelleher. Kang.”

Trulaw leans forward and carefully deposits the folded clothing into his trunk where it sits propped open against the wall. He reaches behind himself and rummages under the blanket. “Look what I nearly forgot I had stashed away in that hole behind the loose panel.” He shakes the object and it makes a liquid, swirling sound – it is a quarter bottle of corellian brandy.

“That better not be from Riggs’ stash.”

“Stars, how stupid do you think I am? Besides, he drank the cheap, knock-off stuff. I wouldn’t use _that_ to polish my buttons. This is the real deal – a jolly old uncle gave it to me when I was back for my father’s funeral. I meant for us all to share it the next time we had some cause for celebration.”

“Getting out of here sounds like cause for celebration.”

“So it does,” Trulaw pats the space beside him and Hux crosses the room and sits. Trulaw twists off the cap and takes a deep pull, then passes it off. “If only we had some glasses and didn’t have to drink from the bottle like savages.”

“I don’t mind that,” Hux says, taking a more cautious sip. His opportunities to enjoy booze have been few and far between. 

“Well,” Trulaw sighs, “here we are. Mummy and Daddy with an empty nest.”

Hux snorts. “Is that how you think of us?”

“Don’t fret dear, I’m letting you be Daddy.”

Hux feels a flush rise up his neck. Trulaw’s grin confirms that he meant that to sound exactly as obscene as it does. “That reminds me,” Hux says, affecting disinterest. “There was some talk of a _reward_ for following your advice?”

“Oh, so there was.” Trulaw unzips his high-collared jacket of his dress whites and shrugs out of it.

“What are you doing?”

“Assembly on the landing pad isn’t for ninety minutes. Last and only time we’re going to get a bedroom to ourselves, might as well make the most of it. Fuck like civilised people, for once.”

Hux takes another gulp of brandy and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Trulaw takes the bottle and his own pull, then screws the top back on and sets it aside. He crosses his arms over his stomach and grips the hem of his undershirt, pulling it up over his head. Hux watches the revealing of his pale, toned stomach, his pink nipples and the flushed red of his throat.

Trulaw sees his hesitation and is puzzled by it. “You’re not getting an attack of shyness, are you?”

“No. I just thought you’d want to stick to our normal routine.”

The _normal routine_ is that they open the fronts of their trousers and take each other in hand, a sort of enhanced masturbation. Hux likes that very much – it feels familiar, limited in scope. They chat during, sometimes, arms braced against the ‘fresher stall wall as if they are neighbours leaning over a common fence. Trulaw has bizarrely soft hands for a cadet and he knows exactly how Hux likes it: how to start off slow, rub his thumb in slow circles around the tip. Even thinking about this makes Hux bite down on his lip.

“If you like,” Trulaw tilts his head, thumb rasping against the top button of his trousers. “But I thought… well, you must have had other ideas. Things you’d like to try, given the opportunity. I know I do.”

“I’m not—” Hux is about to say ‘queer’, but he realises how stupid that will sound, how futile. He kissed a female cadet at the last dance and her mouth was very soft and sweet-tasting. She let him cup her breast as they swayed together in the darkened corridor outside the main hall. It did nothing for him, and she, laughably, remarked on what a _gentleman_ he was for not pushing for more. Hux is very, very queer and shame and denial only give others power. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he amends.

“You, an eighteen-year-old boy, have no strong thoughts or opinions about which sex acts you’d like to try?”

“Not all fantasies are agendas.”

“Speak for yourself.” Trulaw pulls off his belt with a fast, whipping sound, then unfastens his trousers. He bends over and pulls off his boots, then stands pushing off his trousers and underwear in one go and stepping free. He sits back on the bed, one leg folded underneath himself. His pubic hair is darker than the hair on his head. His dick is still soft, but it is perking with interest.

“Have you gone all the way?” Hux asks, suddenly curious. “I mean, let someone penetrate you?”

“No,” Trulaw makes a face. “In this place? Can you imagine?”

“Would you ever?”

“I don’t know. I tried it a little – with my fingers, when I was younger. It felt weird – uncomfortable – but maybe I wasn’t doing it properly.”

“Did you use lubricant?”

“Hand lotion – that was all I had.”

“I think you need a water-based gel.”

“Oh, you’ve done extensive research have you?”

Hux grins. “I wouldn’t say extensive.”

Trulaw leans back, arches his back a little. It is a self-conscious movement – theatrical, as everything he does is. He’s not uncomfortable, though – Hux gets the impression he likes to be looked at. “Are you just going to sit there fully clothed?” he prompts.

“Oh, you want me to give you a show? I didn’t think I was your type.”

Trulaw presses his knuckles to his cheek in an affectation of something – perhaps femininity. “I’ve seen worse.”

Hux stands up to shuck off his jacket. The rest of his clothes come off slower; he is conscious of the weight of Trulaw’s gaze and the fact that he has never been looked at with such intense scrutiny before. He wonders if Trulaw is appraising the parts of his body, measuring them against some internal standard of male beauty – _arms: good, sinewy; shoulders: could be broader..._

He wonders if Trulaw likes his dick. He’s never thought to ask – they are similar in size and shape, so Hux has never had cause for paranoia on that count, but he doesn’t know if Trulaw likes it or would rather have something bigger.

“Well?” Hux asks when he is naked, leaning one shoulder against the edge of the upper bunk. “Do you want me to do a twirl?”

Trulaw laughs. “I’m familiar enough with your freckled arse, you know. I’ve had to look at it every morning in the showers for the past five years.”

“You didn’t have to look at it.”

Trulaw grins. “Maybe not.” He spreads his thighs and pats the space between them. “Come here.”

Hux kneels on the bed and they reach out to stroke one another, a wandering, lingering touch down flat chests and stomachs.

“What do you want me to do?” Hux asks, gaze flickering back up to the other youth’s face.

“You’re the one with the schemes, Hux. Surprise me – pleasantly.”

Hux thinks for a moment before hooking his thumbs behind Trulaw’s knees. He pushes so Trulaw sprawls backwards, legs spread and everything vulnerable on display. Hux looks down the length of his body, taking in his glittering eyes and the ironical tilt to his mouth; flushed chest and taut stomach; the dusting of fair hair spreading down from his navel. His dick is almost fully hard now – circumcised, as they all were according to imperial custom – old superstitions about hygiene and disease control that somehow became a badge of belonging. Hux trails the backs of his fingers up the length of the shaft, listens to the gratifying hiss of breath. He cups the sac, rubbing lightly between Trulaw’s balls just to see his eyes widen – the hint of trepidation there, perhaps. Hux’s hand then trails down, thumb pressing against the dark pucker there between the cheeks of his ass.

Trulaw moans softly and Hux leans down, spits, rubs his thumb in a more insistent circle.

“I don’t suppose you have a secret stash of this water-based gel?” Trulaw asks, sounding gratifyingly breathless.

Hux shakes his head, still staring at where the pad of his thumb pushes against the resistance of the other man’s hole.

“Well,” Trulaw says, “looks like we need a different strategy, General. Any ideas?”

Hux looks at Trulaw’s slim, faintly trembling thighs, wets his bottom lip. “Do you remember that datacard we found?”

“ _Brothers in Arms_?”

It had obviously been a mis-acquisition – Hux found it in the military history section of the library. He and Trulaw had taken turns performing a dramatic reading of it for the amusement of the others during a particularly tedious lockdown. “That’s fucking disgusting, man,” Cord had said, before pulling his pillow over his head. Saff had laughed so hard that the boys in Dorm 5 started pounding the wall and telling him to shut up. Knight had sat with one foot up on his bunk, chewing a thumbnail and asking follow-up questions. (“Stars, Knight,” Trulaw had said, “I’m not the omniscient king of the queers. How should I know if you can fit two dicks in there at once?”)

Hux bites his lip and looks up. “Remember when the two junior officers were stranded in that moon base?”

“‘Oh Lieutenant Gannt, your perfect dick is so big, it couldn’t possibly fit.’ ‘Don’t fret my sweet Corporal Trelling, I’m just going to fuck your silky, slender thighs.’”

“How the hell do you remember that word for word?”

“I have an excellent memory, Hux,” Trulaw replies with a lift of his eyebrows. “Hologrammic, you might say.”

Hux presses his fingertips into the flesh of Trulaw’s inner thigh, stroking the smooth expanse of skin to where it meets the whorls of fair body hair. His gaze flickers back up, seeking an answer to the unvoiced proposal. Trulaw’s lips are parted, his eyes half-lidded and glittering.

“Go on then,” he prompts, jerking his chin in challenge as the fair hair falls back from his forehead. “Fuck my silky, slender thighs.”

Hux breathes in shakily and sits back on his heels. He grasps Trulaw’s left ankle and pulls it up onto his right shoulder, then brings up the right to join it, bringing his legs together. The backs of Trulaw’s thighs are hot against his abdomen and he feels his dick twitch. He spits in his hand and rubs it along the length of his own shaft, hissing quietly at the contact.

“Wait,” Trulaw says, leaning over awkwardly to rummage in his case where it lies next to the bed. He produces a bottle and tosses it underhand, Hux snatches it out of the air: a generic, unscented skin lotion.  Hux squirts a generous amount into the hollow of one hand and rubs them together, then slathers the substance on Trulaw’s inner thighs, making him hiss and flinch at the coolness.

Hux pushes his dick into the gap and reaches up to tighten his grip on Trulaw’s knees, bringing his legs together more tightly. Hux tilts his hips and gasps, feeling the warmth and tightness, so different from the pressure of a hand. He looks down and watches the obscene sight of his own cock pulling out and disappearing into the slick cleft.

After a few experimental thrusts Hux decides that the sensation more teasing than satisfying; he wants more tightness and for his grip on Trulaw’s knees to be less effortful and distracting. He looks down at their clothing on the floor and an idea strikes him. He pulls out and bends down to scrabble for something on the floor. Trulaw makes a drowsy, questioning sound.

“Why did you stop?” Trulaw pulls his arm away from where it has fallen over his face and frowns at the object Hux is holding: a belt – the one issued with their uniforms and which, legend has it, is made from the harness webbing of scrapped tie-fighters. “What are you going to do with that,” he purses his lips in bratty challenge, “spank me?”

“No.” Hux passes the belt around Trulaw’s legs and threads the end through the buckle. He positions the line of the belt just above the other man’s knees and pulls it tight.

“Oh,” Trulaw says, voice quiet and thick. “Oh, that’s… I didn’t think of that.”

“Too tight?”

“No-no! Pull it tighter.”

Hux takes hold of the dangling end of the strap and yanks hard. Trulaw gasps.

“You like that?” Hux hears himself saying – it is more of an accusation than a question. He presses his thumb to where the flesh bulges out beneath the unforgiving band of fabric.

“So do you,” Trulaw replies. There is an air of danger to these proceedings – pleasure and power go together, somehow, but neither of them are sure where the edges are, or how much of themselves they are prepared to reveal.

Hux takes himself in hand and pushes back between Trulaw’s thighs, aiming at the gap just below the swell of his ass. It’s unbelievably tight and wet and he can feel the underside of his cock pressing against the thin, hot skin of Trulaw’s balls, the head sliding up against the length of the shaft.   

Trulaw’s spreads his arms out on the mattress and tilts his head back, letting out a deep, trailing groan. Something goes soft in his face, almost meditative. Hux slides back, adjusts the angle of his hips and moves again.

“Yeah?” Hux asks, wanting – needing – Trulaw to tell him how much he likes it. “You want me to fuck you hard, want me to come on you?”

“Yes, do it!”

Hux hoists Trulaw’s calves onto his shoulder and grabs the strap tightly, then he goes to it – thrusting in a hard, selfish rhythm. He feels Trulaw go limp, moaning deeply as Hux manhandles and uses his body, then starting to tense up, thighs shaking as he gets closer to his own orgasm.

It is over much faster than either of them expect. Trulaw’s eyes open wide as he feels Hux shuddering against him, hissing out a curse, strands of come painting his stomach. Hux lets Trulaw’s legs slide off his shoulder and reaches down to grasp his cock. A clumsy, back-handed squeeze is all that’s required to get Trulaw there too, arching up and his whole body jerking and trembling, mouth stretched wide in a soundless yell.

They stare at each other in shock. Trulaw starts to laugh, turning his face aside into the pillow. Hux puts his hands over his face and tries to come down from the adrenaline, amazed and faintly unsettled. A discovery was made, but he’s not sure how to process it yet – was it Trulaw’s nakedness, the position, the involvement of the belt – or something else entirely – that turned him on?

Trulaw’s toes are yellowish with a lack of blood when they unfasten the strap. “Bloody hell,” he says, still grinning as he sits on the edge of the bed and rotates his ankles, “I have pins and needles all the way up to my waist.”

“Did you like it?” Hux presses.

Trulaw throws him a sardonic look. “Yes, thank-you _darling_ , it was magical.”

They clean up and dress, finding there is just enough time left over to share a last cigarra. Trulaw lights up, heedless of the lingering, incriminating odour. No smoke alarms go off – Yungkai disabled them years ago.

Later, in a grimy spaceport at some minor junction on the Entralla Route, they say a terse farewell.

“Come and stay with me some time,” Trulaw offers, clasping his shoulder.

Hux returns the pressure and says he will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Kylostahp](http://www.http://kylostahp.tumblr.com/) drew what she calls ['the special porn'](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com/post/149111352627/anyway-heres-savagesverse-hux-and-trulaws) as an illustration for this chapter. It is VERY special.


	2. Chapter 2

**34 ABY – Core Worlds**

Hux glances up from his datapad to watch Ren pacing back and forth across the deck of the command shuttle, the split panels of his dark tunic twirling around his legs each time he turns.

“You’re not planning to wear that planetside, are you?” Hux frowns. “It’s not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Why not? I thought we were staying with your ‘friend.’” Ren says this last word the way Hux says ‘the Force’: with a mixture of disbelief and distaste. “He knows you’re a general of the First Order, surely.”

“He does, but he’s a civilian – so I imagine he’s not too keen to have dark wizards traipsing through his house.”

“What do you care what a civilian thinks?”

“Alright,” Hux says, using the same mollifying tone he would on a fractious child, if he ever met one. “Just as you please, Ren. If you want to look like some rimkin warlord in front of the civilised folk, that’s quite your own business. But don’t think I didn’t notice that you put your lightsaber into the luggage – it’s coming straight back out and going into the storage hold.”

Ren folds his arms. “I’m not leaving it on the shuttle.”

“Give me one good reason why not.”

“Corellians are a sneaky and light-fingered. It wouldn’t surprise me if we returned to port to find this vessel stripped.”

Hux recalls that the roll call of notable Corellians includes one Han Solo and thinks about making a cutting remark to that effect, but he does not care to deal with one of Ren’s tantrums so close to their destination. “Fine. Keep your weapon at hand, if you must, but don’t make me regret trusting you on this, Ren. Now sit down and stop pacing. You’re making me dizzy.”

Ren throws himself down on the seating arrangement and lays his arm across its back, tossing his head to get his hair back out of his eyes. He jigs one knee up and down and it makes the table wobble.

Hux glances up again. “What is it that has you in such a pique?”

Ren gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t like any of this. I’m sick of it.”

“As am I, I assure you. I was sick of all this before we even started.”

“No you’re not. You’re excited, I can feel it. And I’m just supposed to tag along so you can gossip and drink and smoke yourself stupid with the old boy network?”

Hux lowers his datapad and gives Ren a look of exasperated disbelief. “Are you actually jealous that I have a _friend_?”

“He wasn’t just your friend. You let him—”

“ _Ren_ ,” Hux brings his hand down on the table with a thud. “I won’t have this, are we clear? I let you away with a lot on this mission, but I’m not going to have you trailing around behind me and snarling like some animal defending its territory.”

Ren glances at him sidelong and chews his bottom lip. Hux sighs, reaching over and lightly grazing the backs of his knuckles across Ren’s cheek. “I never had romantic feelings for him, alright?”

“You’ve never had romantic feelings full stop.”

“That’s as may be, but the point still stands. Don’t be ridiculous and remember we’re here for a reason. He might be a civilian but he’s also a shipbuilding industrialist. He can further our interests. Don’t. Frack this up.”

“Why did you even bring me if I’m such a liability?”

“Believe me Ren, I’ve been asking myself _that_ since we set out.”

Ren scowls, then launches himself upright and goes back to pacing.

*~*~*

They land in Coronet City at sunset, the harbour painted in pastel oranges and pinks and the light winking off tall skyscrapers that are etiolated and twisted like hand-blown glass. A chauffeur-driven speeder is waiting at the spaceport to take them to their final destination, which turns out to be a sleek, ultra-modern building in the shape of a sail. The speeder sets them off on a landing stage built up near the tower’s apex – apparently the location of a spacious penthouse.

As Hux and Ren step out onto the platform a set of transparent doors fold back in zig-zagging sections and their host steps into view. Trulaw is still a dynamic, slender figure; his fair hair worn swept back off his fine-boned face. He is wearing a v-necked suit of bright yellow brocade, the fabric figured with firework explosions of blue and purple flowers and the jacket brought in at the waist with a sash. The ensemble is finished with a cloak of a darker, more golden yellow, lined with a brilliant cobalt blue.

“Hux, you magnificent bastard!” he calls, spreading his arms wide.

“Trulaw!” Hux returns, laughing. Trulaw crosses the space between them in long, rapid strides, then comes to an abrupt halt before Hux and holds out his arm. Hux grasps it and watches as Trulaw’s fingers curl around his own forearm in turn. They hold eye contact for a moment, grinning widely, and then release the formal grip, surging forward to grapple one another; almost toppling over in their sudden fierce, adolescent enthusiasm. They give each other a hearty thump on the back before releasing the embrace.

“Let me look at you,” Trulaw says, taking Hux’s shoulders and holding him at arm’s length. “Stars but that’s an unfortunate haircut, and when did you last see daylight?”

“Whenever we last had to run laps at the academy, I should think.”

Trulaw’s eyes flick up and down as he tries to take in the changes. “Good grief, if our younger selves could only see us now. What would they say?”

“That we turned out pretty well, all things considered.”

“Didn’t we though?” Trulaw looks over Hux’s shoulder towards Ren. “And who is your handsome companion?”

Hux steps back and gestures. “This is my associate, Kylo Ren. Ren, this is Trulaw.”

“Please,” Trulaw says with a xenial smile, “feel free to call me ‘Alten’.”

“Trulaw will do fine.”

Trulaw takes in Ren’s awkwardness with an amused twinkle. “As you wish. What should I call you, ‘Kylo’ or ‘Ren’? Or is it hyphenated?”

“Kylo,” Ren says, at the same instant Hux says “Ren.”

“No-one calls you Kylo,” Hux snaps. Trust Ren to make a simple introduction difficult.

Ren glares at him. “Ren isn’t even my name, it’s my title.”

“Title?” Trulaw presses. “And what exactly is a ‘Ren’?”

“It’s an order of mystic knights,” Ren replies, raising his chin imperiously.

“Indeed?” Trulaw turns his head and gives Hux a look that clearly communicates: ‘have you brought a dangerously delusional man to my home?’

“It’s a real thing,” Hux rolls his eyes, “but don’t get him started.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Ren hisses furiously at Hux.

“Well,” Trulaw says brightly, clapping his hands together. “Let’s not stand about in the cold air arguing. I have rooms much more well-appointed for arguing inside.”

Trulaw leads them through a series of bright, airy rooms with high ceilings, the parallel doorways and abundance of floor-length mirrors making the space seem even larger, until they arrive at a living area with a sunken rectangular seating arrangement. Trulaw trips lightly down the steps and arranges himself on a pale blue couch, gesturing for them to join him. Hux sits across from Trulaw and crosses his legs at the knee. Ren takes the very far end of the same sofa and crosses his arms.

”Let’s have some refreshments, shall we? I’m sure you must be in need after your journey.” Trulaw presses a button on the side of the wide, low table and the flat surface sinks out of sight with a quiet whirr. “Brentaal IV, was it?”

Hux nods. “Most recently, yes.”

“Dreadful place – full of snobs,” Trulaw shakes his head, then looks about himself thoughtfully. “I’m very sorry I have to entertain you in the city, by the way. I’d have much preferred the house in the country at this time of year. But well, my ex is living there, until the divorce is finalised. I suppose it would have been awkward.”

Hux frowns. “You didn’t tell me you were getting married.”

“I thought of sending you an invitation, but then I realised how futile that would be.”

“Well,” says Hux defensively, “I would have sent a present.”

“Anyway,” Trulaw waves a hand, “so it goes. Onwards and upwards.” The table rises slowly back into view, now laden with plates of pastries and arrangements of exotic fruit. Trulaw sits up and lifts a black, angular teapot of mandalorian design. “Shall I be mother?”

“You do know we’re here on a _mission_?” Ren breaks in, huffing with impatience. “This is not a social call.”

“Indeed. Hux gave me to understand that you required some introductions,” Trulaw replies patiently. “To that purpose, I took the liberty of arranging a little gathering. I realise you military types are used to direct action, but this kind of thing takes a little… finessing. Corellians have their ways.”

“I know all about Corellians,” Ren intones darkly before shoving a dainty, intricately decorated confection into his mouth and licking a long stripe of cream from the underside of his thumb. Hux sometimes finds it hard to believe the man was raised by an Alderaanian princess, and not a pack of hungry boar-wolves.

Trulaw chuckles. “Yes, we’re a contrary bunch. We like to always think we’ve got the better end of the deal. So, it’s a question of presenting something tantalising. Something that it seems like you never intended to offer.”

“I received your debriefing pack with the guest list.” Hux lowers his eyebrows as he deposits a pastry on a delicate, hand-painted plate. “Keena Jatt and Tetch Lido seem like the biggest fish who may be sympathetic to the cause.”

“I think they’re sympathetic to anyone who offers to help them dodge export taxes.”

“Yes, but I’m sure they’d appreciate some kind of ideological fig leaf all the same.”

Trulaw crosses one long leg over the other and straightens out the crease down the centre of his trousers. “Good to see you haven’t lost your talent for sizing up a likely ally.”

“I like to think I’ve refined it.”

“Well, do let me know if you require any extra intel. I can send over the protocol droid if you want more fulsome biographies or accounts of their recent dealings, but I thought you might like to rest before the evening’s festivities. I’ve put you in the Sea Room, Hux. Kylo, I thought one of the East-facing suites would command the best views but do let me know if you prefer the other side of the house.”

“We only need one room,” Ren says, chewing rapidly and looking over at Hux as if daring him to contradict it.

“Oh, well one doesn’t like to _assume_ ,” returns Trulaw, arching his pale eyebrows.

Hux sips his tea and gazes over the rim of the cup. “You kriffing _love_ to assume, Trulaw. Before you took up heavy industry your main trade was in gossip and wild speculation.”

“Once, perhaps, but I’m a changed man, General. I have absolutely no theories on the nature of your visit here,” his gaze flickers briefly over to Ren, “or what urgent congresses might take place behind closed doors.”

“Is that so?” Hux smiles. “Then we’re very grateful that you agreed to put us up.”

Trulaw presses his knuckles to his cheek – that old affectation of something, though it does not read so much feminine anymore as simply jovial and warm. Perhaps that’s what it is: an affectation of _affection_. “My dear Hux,” he exclaims, “just don’t leave it seventeen years next time!”

*~*~*

The party is already in full-swing when Ren and Hux come down from their room. In their previous communications, Trulaw had assured Hux that it was “no trouble” to arrange what he had termed “an intimate gathering” but as Hux pauses half-way down the staircase, he begins to think there has been a miscommunication. There are at least eighty of Corellia’s wealthiest citizens scattered through the penthouse reception rooms, sipping elaborately-garnished cocktails and snatching at passing canapés. The noise level is startling, voices echoing off the high ceilings and hard surfaces and redounding back like water echoing through an underground cave. Hux stares over the heads of the guests until he catches sight of the host. Trulaw has changed into what clearly passes for eveningwear on Corellia: a close-fitting jacket and long, lapped skirt, both in a shiny fabric of a deep green jewel tone. Tiny crystals cascade over the jacket’s shoulders and down the lapels. Beneath it Trulaw wears some sort of iridescent shirt with a collar that ties into a cravat. He looks up and spots Hux, breaking into a mischievous grin as he raises both hands to indicate the crowd.

“Did you know it would be like this?” Ren asks accusingly, his voice coming from somewhere above Hux’s head.

“No. Apparently this is Trulaw’s idea of ‘intimate’. Thank the stars I didn’t go to his wedding.” Hux tugs self-consciously at the hem of his tunic and scans the faces of the guests to locate one of the faces from the list of potential sympathisers. He pulls his shoulders back and takes a deep breath, then steps forward into the arena.

Trulaw catches up to Hux sometime later by the bar area. He puts his empty glass down and an obliging hospitality droid sets to refilling it. “I see you’re making your rounds. How did you make out with Lido?”

Hux swallows a warm mouthful of brandy. “Hard to say. I think I need a Corellian interpreter.”

“Oh, that’s easy! Just imagine you’re playing a sort of antonyms parlour game. ‘Yes’ means ‘no’, ‘I’ll think about it’ means ‘I will never give it a second thought’, ‘I’m playing it straight with you’ means ‘I’ve just lifted all the credits from your back pocket’ – and so on.”

Hux frowns. “In that case I think I’m making out rather badly. At least the hospitality is good,” he raises his glass in a salute.

Trulaw smiles and claps a hand to his shoulder. “I am very glad you came, Hux. It’s hard all this being a stranger in a strange land.”

“But you were _born_ here.”

“Was I, though?” Trulaw asks wonderingly, gazing out at the crowd with his eyebrows drawn together.

Hux lets his gaze drift over the room to a large painting – a formal portrait of Trulaw and another man with dark skin, close-cropped hair, and wide, soulful brown eyes. The man is seated and Trulaw is standing behind him, arms linked around his neck and he leans down, face in profile. Hux gestures at the work. “That’s your ex, I take it?”

Trulaw’s eyes narrow. “Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?”

“Don’t say he looks like Saff. That’s exactly what Yungkai and Knight said and the joke is getting terribly, terribly old.”

“Ah,” Hux raises his eyebrows, “so they came to the wedding, did they?”

“They did.”

“And how have they made out, generally?”

“Yungkai’s in research and development for a weapons tech company on Kuat – not technically Order property, of course, but I’m sure anyone who looked closely at the bankroll would find the link. Knight’s still governor on that rock – FOC-something-or-other. But I’m sure you know that – you probably stalk him on the holonet.”

“I do no such thing. We correspond, occasionally. I’ve sent him some things for the kids.”

“That was thoughtful of you. Have you met his wife?”

“Once, seventeen years ago. Why, what’s she like?”

“She’s like you in lipstick, only with a conscience. I don’t think you’d get on.”

“Hm,” Hux swirls his drink consideringly. “Her thank-you notes _are_ rather terse – and yet somehow loaded with disapproval.”

“He’s been talking about a reunion, you know – Knight, that is. I think it’s a wonderful idea, but Lina says you’d never go for it.”

“She seems to know me very well, this Mrs Knight.”

“I rather think she does, you know.” Trulaw casts his eyes up towards the ceiling and then looks around at Hux. “Soon enough it’ll be _two decades_ since we graduated, can you believe that?”

“So it will.” Hux tries to think forward three years – he can only conceptualise it in terms of missions, acquisitions, manoeuvres.  By his own best projection, he will be well on his way to becoming galactic emperor by then; by his worst he will be dead.

Trulaw turns to look at himself in the bar mirror, touching a fingertip to the fine lines radiating from the corner of one eye. “Oh hell, when did we get old, Hux?”

Hux snorts into his drink. “Speak for yourself – I’m just coming into my prime.”

“Yes, yes, it’s always onwards and upwards for you. So shall I tell Knight you said yes to a reunion three years hence? Unless, of course, there’s a more pressing engagement to bring us all together before then.”

“Such as what – another funeral?”

“Stars forbid! I thought you might like to make an honest man of your Kylo. Give us all a nice day out somewhere with the Order footing the bill, for once.”

Hux lets out a bark of laughter. “Oh no. I am not the marrying kind, especially not with Ren.”

Trulaw clicks his tongue and gives a drawn-out sigh. “Oh Hux, you always were the very worst to the ones you liked.”

“My liking or disliking has nothing to do with it, it’s a matter of strategy. The difference between you and me, Trulaw, is that you’re sentimental.”

Trulaw tilts his head to one side as he considers the accusation. “Am I, though?”

Hux raises his glass and points with a forefinger towards the portrait that seems to keep watch over the partygoers. “I suppose that just ties the room together, does it?”

“Well, I see the years haven’t dulled the cutting edge of your wit.” Trulaw indicates the corner where Ren slumps against a wall, glowering. “But speaking of Kylo, he looks a little out-of-place. Shall I make an effort to introduce him around?”

“Not unless you’d like to drastically reduce your social circle. Ren has all the social grace of a hormonal bantha.”

Trulaw narrows his eyes thoughtfully. “I can think of a few well-wishers whose company I could stand to lose. What does he drink, your Kylo?”

“He doesn’t.”

“Mm. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke – what does he do?”

“It’s classified.”

“Fine, be mysterious.” Trulaw leans across the bar and plucks a bottle of mineral water from a shelf. “Good luck with your persuasion, old boy. I hear Jatt likes red heads. Why don’t you try your luck there?”

Hux watches as Trulaw weaves through the crowd, throwing out smiles and greetings. When he reaches Ren, the latter straightens up from his watchful slouch, his expression shifting from boredom to something more stern. He is suspicious – he doesn’t know what to make of Trulaw’s brand of glib charm and he suspects he is being mocked by the pleasantries. He looks at the offered bottle of water as if it is a grenade and Trulaw has just activated the thermal detonator.

Hux enjoys one last moment of amusement at Ren’s expense, then throws back the last of his drink and sets off across the room in search of his next mark, steeling himself for more elliptical conversations, more suffering through bluffs and counter-bluffs for some glimpse at the real agenda. He locates Madame Jatt standing circled about by a crowd of admirers, a huge feather plume crowning her intricately coiled and piled hair and nodding along with her speech, as if in sycophantic agreement with her. Hux plasters a complaisant smile on his face and steps forward to introduce himself.

*~*~*

When the music starts up, a b’ssa nuuvu band with a stunning lethan twi’lek singer, Hux falls back in search of more refreshments. He leans one elbow on the bar and surveys the crowd while he downs another brandy, then decides to step out onto the terrace for a smoke.

As the doors whir closed behind him, Hux finds himself among yet another press of bodies, a glamorous herd standing near to some low-hovering space heaters. He moves past these groups in search of a more secluded spot and catches sight of the back of their host. Trulaw’s pale hair looks white in the glare of the light pollution and a galaxy of tiny crystals glitters across shoulders. He is dancing with a tall, dark-haired man in a deep red tunic and leggings tucked into knee-length boots, their left hands raised and clasped as they trace the steps of a formal dance Hux hasn’t seen since he was forced to learn it as a cadet with Knight treading on his toes. When the man raises his head and light falls across his scarred face Hux sees that it is Ren. Trulaw’s laugh ripples across the terrace and Hux watches incredulously as Ren smiles.

 _Of course_ , he thinks in annoyance. Of course Trulaw would find ways to flatter Ren and soothe his volatility; to appeal to those parts of him that are desperate for approval. He hopes Trulaw has not undone all of his good work.

“May I?” he asks, taking hold of Trulaw’s elbow and pulling him back.

“Certainly,” Trulaw says, “I was just keeping him warm for you, General.”

Hux slips easily into the other man’s place, grabbing Ren’s hand where it lingers in the air and taking a firm grasp of his waist. He catches Trulaw’s smile of amusement as the host turns and disappears back into the crowd of revellers, laughter and conversation springing up wherever he goes.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Ren.” Hux hip-checks him into taking a backwards step, using the momentum to push him into the first figure of the dance. “I didn’t know you could dance.”

Ren frowns, obviously displeased by the intrusion. “Trulaw was teaching me.”

“Really? Then show me what you’ve learned.”

Ren almost stumbles as Hux pushes him in a direction he wasn’t expecting to go. “Trulaw let me lead.”

Hux smiles at him meanly. “Oh, you were never meant to lead.”

Ren scowls and stops moving, becoming stubbornly fixed in place. “You’re drunk,” he tells Hux, untangling his fingers and giving Hux’s chest a firm shove.

Hux’s irritation flares and he is too tired to check it. “So what if I am?” he snaps. “Maybe I need some bloody support on this mission. I’m not getting any from you.”

“You dragged me here,” Ren flings one arm out, gesturing wildly to the cityscape below. “On this stupid, _pointless_ tour of all the places in the galaxy I never wanted to set foot in again. What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, Ren – that perhaps you might make more of an effort than standing in corners and slipping off to caper about with the host.”

Ren spreads his hands. “I’m not trained for this!”

“You shouldn’t have to be trained to _make conversation_. Bloody hell Ren, I know you spent your formative years marooned on some island for Force-sensitive imbeciles, but your mother was a kriffing senator.”

“Don’t talk about my mother!” Ren jabs him in the chest again with two accusing fingers and as Hux stumbles back against the railing he feels the air around them buzz with the gathering energy, Ren’s anger charging him up like a battery.

“Or what? Or you’ll choke the life out of me and fling me off the balcony?”

“What? No! Frack, Hux, why would you say that?” Ren’s energy is now split between bewilderment and rage. His eyes are wide and dark. “ _Why would you say that_? You think I’m a monster?”

“I think you’re an undisciplined child who throws a fit the second something doesn’t go his way. There are smoking holes in my Star Destroyer testament to your chronic lack of self-control!”

“Oh _your_ Star Destroyer is it? You hypocrite!”

Hux recoils. “Hypocrite?”

“You pretend you’re a team player, but you’re not. You think the Order’s just some tool you can use to catapult yourself to a throne. Don’t think the Supreme Leader doesn’t know that – he thinks your ambitions are amusing and pathetic!”

It is at this moment, with Ren’s saliva speckling his cheek, that Hux realises how indiscreet they are being. He turns to find several bystanders glancing over, some whispering, some with disapproving, taken-aback expressions, as if someone has had the audacity to serve them red wine with a fish course.

“Shut your bloody mouth, Ren!” he hisses. “You’re making a scene.”

“Oh,” Ren starts to laugh incredulously. “ _I’m_ making a scene? I was just fine until you had to butt in and make sure I knew my place. You want me to talk to people? Fine! You want me to play nice with your school friend? I was! But that’s not enough for you is it? You also want me to be miserable and look like an asshole while I do it.”

“I want no such thing! What I want is for you to conduct yourself with some modicum of grace and dignity for once. Shrieking at me on a rooftop is conduct unbecoming for any adult, let alone someone who claims to be a _knight_.”

“I don’t _shriek_ ,” Ren says in a sharp voice that he is clearly struggling to control. “So screw you, this party, and this whole planet, too.” He gives Hux one last aggressive jab in the shoulder with his fingertips. “I’m going to bed.”

“Good!” Hux yells after him. “You’re about as much bloody help asleep as you are awake!”

He narrows his eyes at the group of Corellian observers, who are now staring openly, all conversation on the terrace having ceased. Hux feels his upper lip curling back from his teeth in a snarl. “What?” he snaps.

*~*~*

The party is winding down and the voices drift up as a rolling babble that is almost soothing as Hux closes the bedroom door and rests his back against it, sighing heavily. The room is decorated entirely in shades of blue, grey and green, the windows and bedframe hung with billowing, translucent fabrics that mute the lights and give everything a watery, undersea feel.

Hux undresses and leaves his clothes in a pile, too drunk and demoralized to do much else. He draws back one of the gossamer curtains and looks down at Ren, who is either asleep or pretending to be, his breathing deep and regular and lips faintly parted.

Hux commands the remaining lights off, then climbs into bed and lies there stiffly on his back, trying to assess the outcomes of the evening. How promising or likely to endure were the agreements he reached with the Corellian contacts? How many onlookers witnessed his spat with Ren, and how many of those caught anything of significance? He finds that he is too tired to evaluate, and certainly too tired to make any further plans.

He rolls onto his side and looks at Ren. He considers, as he often does, how strange it is that a man with such power should be so directionless, so at the mercy of his own fluctuating emotions. He thinks about Knight, who never once refused one of Hux’s requests or questioned his commands; a sharp-edged weapon made to serve, stoical and utterly self-contained. He wonders, not for the first time, why he left Knight behind.

Hux turns onto his back again and closes his eyes. He falls into an uneasy sleep and dreams that he is in a boat; a narrow, precarious thing so tossed by waves that he has to hold on tight to a slat in the floor. He is on Arkanis, lost upon the sea and drifting far beyond the band of horizon he could see from the window of his childhood bedroom. He hopes against hope that the creature – that horror from the depths – doesn’t feel him adrift there, so lost and helpless. In the way of dreams, the boat is also his bunk at the academy, and he fears if he falls out he won’t hit water at all, but fall far through the air onto a hard, tiled floor, cracking his skull open. Then Trulaw and Saff will wrap him in a sheet and Berkal will wail, that horrible sound of formless grief.

When a particularly violent wave pounds his imaginary vessel, Hux wakes with a start and for a few panic-stricken seconds he imagines he really is falling. Slowly, his rigid body relaxes and he takes in the soft comfort of the bed and the warmth of Ren next to him. Ren is lying on his side, facing Hux; his eyes move beneath the translucent lids, deep in REM sleep. Hux takes a deep, calming breath and charitably hopes that Ren’s dreams are better than his own. Ren often has night terrors – he sits up and stares with sightless eyes and sometimes he screams or shouts. Hux has become adept at talking him down from them: what he says is less important than he low, reassuring tone of his voice. Ren never remembers these episodes – yet another thing he does not have the wit to be grateful for, Hux thinks, darkly.

Hux climbs out of bed, knowing that it will be some time before he can sleep again and wanting something to soothe that jittery feeling in his chest. He pulls on his wrinkled clothes from the previous night and heads back to the reception rooms. He finds that the guests are gone and most of the signs of revelry have been cleaned up, though a few droids are still sweeping and gathering glasses. When he reaches the room with the large wedding portrait, Hux feels a breeze rippling over his face. He passes behind the partially retracted screen and out onto the terrace. Here he finds Trulaw is sitting on a low couch and looking out at the sun rising over the bay. He is wearing white silk pyjamas and robe of the same material that has been dyed in shades of red, yellow and orange, inky splotches of colour that look almost like a canopy of leaves. His face is pale and drawn, his hair tousled by the breeze.

He looks up at Hux’s approach. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Dying for a smoke, that’s all.”

Trulaw leans down and pushes an elegantly-carved box across the coffee table to within Hux’s reach. “Ah, rising early to sneak a smoke in the bleak pre-dawn – that’s what I _don’t_ miss about being married.”

“Ren and I are far from married,” Hux selects a cigarra and waves it beneath his nose, inhaling the toasted scent of the fine tabac. “He’s out of my chain of command, that’s all. It’s convenient.”

Trulaw’s lip twitches in amusement as he reaches over and strikes a light for Hux. “Oh yes, he seems very _convenient_. How’d you find him - did you have to take out a personal advertisement in one of the Order’s internal publications? ‘M4M: ambitious general seeks gangly submissive-types. Freckles and jug-ears strongly preferred.’”

“He’s nothing like Knight,” Hux says, exhaling an even stream of blue-grey smoke. “Besides, I’m not the one who married the living image of an old flame.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Trulaw replies with an attitude of wounded dignity.

“What was his name, your husband?”

“First name? Wikk. An utterly stupid name – told him so the first night we met. ‘Sounds like a brand of kitchen floor cleaner,’ I said.”

“He must have found your candour charming.”

“Well, the charm wore off, eventually,” Trulaw sighs. “I don’t mean to sound bitter – he was a very sweet boy. He did his best, which is more than I can say of myself.”

“Did you ever tell him? About Saff.”

“Saff,” Trulaw shakes his head. “Stars, Hux. I had reckoned our combined odds pretty well, but why did it have to be him? I think about that a lot. I mean, why couldn’t it have been Cord? He probably wouldn’t even notice if someone put a blaster bolt through his head. He’d just keep lumbering on.”

Hux coughs, trying to inhale and laugh at the same time.

“Berkal probably wouldn’t mind either,” Trulaw continues meditatively. “I mean, he’s only ever been half-there anyway. And Storno that crazy bastard. How is he still alive?”

“Storno is one of the immortals. You and I will be long gone and he’ll still be hopping ships and raising hell.”

“I know – he’s living proof there’s no true order or justice in the universe.” After a beat, he adds: “So is what happened to Saff.”

“You could only fight his battles for him for so long.” Hux closes his eyes, thinks of Cord offering the Saff the blood-smeared ornamental knife; Trulaw stepping between them and batting his hand away, saying “enough.” Yungkai had wanted to object, but the fire in the next room was already burning out of control. Hux blames himself, in a way, for not stepping in. For allowing Trulaw to block Saff’s education.

Trulaw leans forward and grinds out the end of his cigarra in a glazed calamarian seashell. “I know you all think I was in love with him, that it was some mawkish teenage crush. It wasn’t – believe me, I had plenty of those. If I was in love, it was with his goodness. The way that place couldn’t touch him, and didn’t make him hard.” He sits back, tucking his bare feet underneath him and gazing up at the lightening sky. “When I was near to him I almost felt like I could – that I could share it, somehow.”

“I never knew that. You always seemed so unaffected by everything.”

“Oh, I was!” Trulaw turns his head to look at him again. “I used to think it was a great lark, not feeling anything. When I realised I could do that – just turn it all off and drift, watch what was happening as if it was through a viewport – it felt like a magic power.”

“You did what you had to do to survive. I admired you for it.” Hux frowns. “I was always so angry – every day was a fresh round of humiliations, petty and large.”

“Mmm. The thing is though, you defer and defer, thinking soon, _soon_ things will be better – then it’ll be safe to switch it back on. But it never seems like it is. You’re too cautious, too raw underneath. How would I even catch up? I wouldn’t know what to do with myself – I’d probably start having uncontrollable tantrums like a child.”

“Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. You should ask Ren about it – I’m sure he’d be glad to teach you.”

Trulaw laughs, a sharp, almost hysterical sound, and covers his mouth with his hand. “Is he really a mystic knight? He doesn’t seem the type – the mystic type, or the knightly type.”

“He’s as mystical as they come. He can kill a man with his thoughts. He can stop blaster bolts in mid-air.”

“Bantha fodder. I suppose he can fly and grant wishes, too. What is he, a bloody Jedi?”

“He used to be. He was brought up as part of a whole new generation under that rebel scum Skywalker.”

“No, this is nonsense! It’s myth.”

“I only wish it was.”

“Come on then – what happened to this so-called new generation?”

Hux gives him a sharp look. “Ren. Ren happened to them.”

Trulaw lets out a low, soft whistle. “And to think I made fun of him with such impunity.”

“Well. He knows not to throttle civilians, most of the time.”

“That’s reassuring.” Trulaw takes up another cigarra and taps it against the surface of the table, pressing his lips together in a line. He glances sideways at Hux, sly and evaluating, and then looks away. “That business with the Hosnian System – or rather, the gaping hole in space where the Hosnian System used to be. I’ve heard a number of Outer Rim warlords and terrorist organisations tried to claim the credit, but the Resistance sources all claimed it was the Order’s doing. Is that true?”

“Yes, but I can’t say more than that. It was a tactical decision.”

Trulaw shakes his head, fumbles with the lighter. “Well. That’s one way to spin mass destruction.”

“You’re surprised?”

“No!” he replies sharply. “I assure you, Hux, if we’d had a yearbook category for ‘power-mad bastard most likely to blow up a whole star system’, I definitely would have voted for you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand. You were only ever out for yourself – you never cared to see the big picture.”

“I may be a cold-blooded capitalist, but at least I never vaporised entire cultures at the push of a button. In the name of what? Order?” Trulaw gestures sharply and the wide sleeve of his robe ripples. “Yes, I’m sure the galaxy will be well-ordered _indeed_ when it stops being clogged up with all those untidy lifeforms.”

“Don’t be naïve. Honestly, where do you think all those components your factories churn out and your shell corporations trade on end up?” Hux watches as Trulaw tenses his jaw, a tendon flexing there. “You knew what it meant to invite me here. This was about buying yourself some plausible deniability – the Republic triumphs, well, you never supported the Order, you just hosted an old school chum. The First Order triumphs – well, didn’t you do your bit helping to whip up support?”

Trulaw stares straight ahead. “It’s like you said. I’ve always done what I have to to survive.”

Hux exhales slowly, lets out the tension in his shoulders. He rubs one eye with the heel of his hand. “But surviving isn’t the same as living, is it?”

“You have me there.” Trulaw glances over at Hux, curls into himself and gathers his varicoloured robe closer. “Do you remember that last afternoon on NEC-52 – before the shuttle came to round up the last sad remnants of us that needed ferrying to a public spaceport?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“What do you remember?”

“That it was just you and me in the dorm, drinking. Talking about the future. Fooling around, for old times’ sake.”

“That’s still one of the best fucks I ever had. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No. And we didn’t fuck, technically.”

“Oh yes, _technically_. I think about it sometimes, and I wonder why I liked it so much. Was it because we were always honest with one another – about our feelings, or lack thereof; about our intentions?”

“I figured you must just like being tied up.”

Trulaw laughs, exhales smoke through his nostrils. “Well, that goes without saying – just as it goes without saying that you like to be in charge – but it was something more than that, in that moment.” He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “Was it the perfect isolation, the perfect _peace_ , in that terrible place? I remember how lovely it felt to be the focus of your attentions. You, who always has a dozen schemes in hand; who takes in a fellow and sees three different ways he could be used.” He breathes out slowly and his eyes flicker open. “Maybe that’s what your Kylo likes, too.”

“I can’t pretend to know.”

“Balls. You, let someone close to you and not consider what hold you have over them? That’ll be the day.”

“Ren is…” Hux almost says ‘special’ and wants to sneer at himself for it, “ _singular_.” Trulaw watches him in a sly, knowing way that makes him feel annoyed again, but he tamps it down. “He was a virgin when we met. Can you imagine it? All of that,” he gestures vaguely, “all of that ridiculous passion and he hadn’t the faintest idea what he wanted, let alone how to ask for it. How he _wanted_ , though.”

“I can see how that would appeal to you – the idea of something untouched that you could claim for your own. Imperialist through and through, that’s what you are.”

Hux is silent for a long moment as he looks out over the harbour, watching the tiny, insubstantial crafts zipping over the surface of the choppy water. “It’s his power that fascinates me. You and me… our life’s work is all about structures, human and material, what we can build and maintain. Ren isn’t like that. He brings his power with him, living somewhere under his skin – in his blood, maybe. He doesn’t need others and there’s nothing that can be taken from him. What wouldn’t you give for that?”

Trulaw turns his head, leaning his cheek against his palm on top of the cushion. “You tell me, General.”

*~*~*

Hux returns to the opulent suite of guest rooms, moving silently through the lounge area and into the refresher. He steps into a spacious shower stall and manipulates the settings to turn it from ‘water’ to ‘sonic’. He switches it to a high particle-bombardment rate to rid himself of the lingering reek of smoke and emerges feeling clean, his skin pink and tingling. When he enters the bedroom he finds Ren awake, leaning up on one elbow and looking over at him in the half-light.

“What time is it?” Ren asks, running a hand back through his rumpled hair.

“About oh-four-thirty.”

“Where did you go?”

“For a smoke.”

Ren makes a face and drags his hand back through his hair. “When we get back, you’re going to have to get your lungs removed and suspended in bacta.”

Ren pulls back the covers and Hux climbs into the bed next to him, turning onto his side and leaning back against Ren’s broad chest. Ren strokes the length of his arm with one fingertip and kisses behind his ear. The tip of Ren’s nose brushes through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Mm, you showered.”

“Very observant.” Hux yawns. “Go back to sleep.”

After a beat, Ren asks: “hey, did your parents fight a lot when you were growing up?”

“ _Ren_ ,” Hux says in his most forbidding voice.         

“Mine did,” he continues heedlessly. “I don’t think they were a very good example, you know? I don’t want us to be like that.” He folds an arm across Hux’s chest and squeezes him. “We should work on communication.”

“I’m well versed in effective communication and you’re a mind-reader. Perhaps our problem is that we understand one another too well.”

Ren makes a considering sound. “Something has upset you. What happened?”

“Nothing happened – I was just having a conversation with Trulaw. About the old days, old habits.” Hux rolls over onto his front, one arm crooked under the pillow. Ren strokes his back up and down, easy and proprietary, and Hux begins to think about some concerning _new_ habits.

There is blissful silence for a minute. Hux closes his eyes and tries to fall back to sleep, but the nicotine makes him feel hyper-alert  – his mind flits from thought to thought about the past and its link to the present; the worrying continuities that make him feel like some part of himself was ossified long ago. Ren kisses the nape of his neck and then lays his head down on Hux’s back, sleep-warmed cheek pressed between his shoulder-blades.

“I feel the same way. It’s like a withered limb I have to drag around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Memories. My past.”

“Go to sleep. I’m not in the mood for a mawkish heart-to-heart.”

He hears Ren sigh and his head hitting the pillow. “You were with _him_.”

Hux turns his head so he can squint blearily at Ren. “Oh bloody hell – is that what this is about? You still think I’m carrying a torch for someone I had some clumsy teenage fumbles with almost two decades ago?”

“He was your first,” says Ren, twisting his full lips. “And you liked him – then and now. You don’t really like anyone.”

“Is your ego really that fragile, Ren?”

Ren pouts in a way Hux suspects he thinks is attractive, like an adolescent mimicking adult sexuality. “You don’t seem very interested in me when he’s around. We haven’t made love since we came here.”

“ _Made love_ ,” Hux repeats, “when in hell have we ever done that?”

“You know what I mean,” Ren says, that manic gleam coming into his eyes that means he thinks that he is on to something. “I know that’s why you brought me with you to the Core. So you could throw me down on silk sheets and have your fill of me, where no-one can see and I’m only yours.”

“Kriff me. Have you been at the romance novels? This is bizarre, even for you.”

“Shhh, don’t talk,” Hux is jostled by the pitching of the mattress as Ren moves, clambering over him and planting his knees either side of Hux’s thighs. He entwines their fingers and presses Hux down, laying his not inconsiderable weight along Hux’s back.

“What the hell, Ren?”

Ren kisses the side of his neck, wet mouth and a scrape of teeth. “I want to do that thing you think about but you won’t let yourself have.”

“What is this nonsense?”

“I want to put my tongue in you,” Ren whispers hotly. “I want to have that. To ruin you for anyone else.” He bites the line of Hux’s jaw, tilts his hips so Hux can feel the length of his hardening cock.

Hux struggles beneath him, feeling a rush of humiliation and heat at the suggestion. “Get off me you oaf.”

“Please,” Kylo murmurs. “Please just let me lick it. I know you want it. I know you think about it when you look at my mouth. It drives me crazy thinking about it.”

Hux goes very still. “No,” he says thickly.

“Why not?” Ren presses, sounding petulant. “You want to. I want to.”

“Because it’s disgusting.”

Ren makes a sound of frustration. Hux feels him sit back and yet when he tries to move his hands they stay in place – a Force barrier keeping them on either side of his head on the mattress. Apart from wandering in and out of his mind at will, Ren has never used his powers on Hux in the bedroom before. It is humiliating and Hux wants to tell him to let go, but his throat is tight and he fears that his voice will tremble if he tries to speak.

“That’s not it,” Ren says thoughtfully, stroking down Hux’s back, following the curve of his ass and then gripping the meat of his thigh in one large hand. “Oh,” he says, a rising syllable of realisation, “ _oh_ , you don’t know, do you? You don’t know how it feels. You think it’s just about submitting.” Hux feels him move back, and then breath on the small of his back, a wet kiss there. “Let me show you.”

Hux actually wants to laugh at this – Ren, who was a fumbling virgin at twenty-eight, thinking he could possibly have something to teach someone like Hux, who was sexually precocious (to say the least) and accustomed from his youth to knowing and pursuing his desires.

“You only go after what you _think_ you should want,” Ren says, eavesdropping through Hux’s skull in that irritating way of his. “I know how to please you – let me do it.”

“Release my arms,” Hux says. The pressure lifts instantly but he does not move to push Ren off, instead crossing his arms to rest his forehead on them and make breathing easier. Ren moves to lie between his thighs, spreading them apart and nuzzling at the vulnerable skin there. Hux thinks about Trulaw, how open and shameless he had been that one time they were in bed together – Hux had thought then that it weakness that made him that way, but with the benefit of hindsight he is not so sure.

Ren bites him. “Don’t think about him. Think about me and all the things I can do for you that no-one else can.”

“Like what?” Hux’s breath hitches as he feels a warm, wet muscle dragging over his hole; the instantaneous tingle and throb of so many nerve endings. It is intense in a way even the most skilful blowjob is not. Ren licks across him then pulls back to suck very gently, circling the rim with the tip of his tongue. Hux buries his face in the pillow again and lets out a low, deep moan.

Ren raises his head, making an obscene slurping sound. “You want me to stop?”

“No,” Hux hisses. “Keep going, damn you.”

Ren gives a soft hum of pleasure and sucks a love bite on Hux’s inner thigh, then returns to his licking across the surface, the strokes of his tongue more confident and lingering now. He circles the rim with the point of his tongue again and pushes in, making Hux let out a muffled shout and spread his trembling thighs wider.  

Hux feels himself dilate around the wet, twisting muscle. Ren’s sandpaper scruff is sharp against his ass and inner thighs and everything – the drag and burn, the wetness and heat, the strange pressure inside him – is utterly overwhelming. His whole body goes limp and helpless, he struggles to breathe against the fabric of the pillow even though he knows it is only a matter of turning his head. Ren moans softly as he pulls back and Hux gasps a shocked lungful of air as a hand on his hip flips him over onto his back.

Ren is lying sprawled on his stomach between Hux’s spread thighs, his mouth red and shining, He parts his full lips around the head of Hux’s cock and sucks it deeply, bobbing his head before pulling off with a pop. The tip of his tongue traces wet path down the underside of Hux’s dick and then wetness and heat envelops his balls. Hux hisses and curses softly, tilting his hips until Ren’s hands clamp down and put a stop to his movements. Then Ren is back inside him, pushing deeper than before. A calloused hand pumps his cock and Hux is coming with a shout, head thrown back and back arching. He watches, panting, as Ren lazily trails his tongue all the way back up and eagerly licks at the thick trails of semen on his stomach and chest.

Before Hux can process what is happening, Ren is leaning over him, pressing their mouths together. Hux shudders at the taste, but more so the knowledge of how filthy it is. Ren straddles his chest, taking his own dick in hand and stroking it, groaning with his head thrown back. Hux is still out of breath and lightheaded, he draws his eyebrows together and stares at the view of Ren’s hand moving quickly up and down the thick shaft, the foreskin pulling back to reveal the wet, messy glans: Ren’s outsized, disorderly, new-republican dick.

Ren tilts his hips and rubs the tip against Hux’s mouth. Hux flushes with shame and turns his face aside, precome trailing along his cheek. Ren’s free hand grips his chin and brings it back, his thumb slipping between Hux’s lips and between his teeth. Hux lets his mouth fall open, feels the head of Ren’s cock rubbing his tongue and twitching against his soft palate, then Ren pulling back and a spill of the hot, bitter come into his mouth, some of it splashing against his neck and trickling down into the hollow of his throat. He opens his eyes and sees Ren’s flushed face, that avid look has returned.

Ren leans down and swipes his fingers through the mess on Hux’s throat and sticks his fingers in his own mouth. Hux is helplessly disgusted, yet he can’t look away; he lets it happen, all of it. He has always known that Ren likes to be debased, but has never dreamed that he could be dragged down with him.

“You like that,” Ren murmurs, kissing him, sucking on his tongue. “I know.”

“Get off,” Hux pushes his shoulder, directing Ren to fall back onto his side of the bed.

Ren flings a heavy arm over him and pants against the back of his neck. Hux can feel the infuriating curve of his smile.

*~*~*

Having decided that his thanks and farewells will be best delivered in private, Hux leaves Ren behind in their room, where the latter still stands towelling his wet hair and dragging clothes out of his duffle bag in search of something clean to wear.

As Hux makes his way down the staircase, he hears voices and heads towards the source of the sound. He weaves his way through reception rooms until he finds himself in the living area that their host first conducted them to upon their entering the house the previous day. Trulaw is seated in the sunken lounging area, dressed in an outfit of pale, watery blue and a dove grey cape worn off one shoulder. His expression is cool and watchful, his personality seeming muted to fit his clothes.

A man with close-cropped hair and dark skin is standing near him, dressed very simply in a baggy white shirt, belted around the middle, and soft moss-green trousers tucked into boots. The man is saying something in a low, emphatic tone and gesturing with one hand, but Trulaw does not answer anything he says; his expression seems distant, almost inattentive.

Hux steps back from the doorway, aware he has intruded upon a private matter. He withdraws to a low, rather impractical couch in the next room and sits, crossing one leg over the other. He wonders, idly, how long it has been since he was obliged to wait for an audience – all those hours spent sitting in stuffy outer offices, cap clutched in a sweaty hand, as he waited for some major or colonel to give him five minutes of their oh-so-valuable time. It can’t have been all that long ago, but his recollections are so hazy and dim that they feel like a memory from a past life.

He stands as the visitor exits, the man almost colliding with him in his hurry to leave. As the man starts back and apologises, Hux notes that he has very familiar dark and expressive eyes. He doesn’t, as it happens, look a great deal like Saff, but there is a similarity in demeanour – a softness, or an openness, perhaps.

“You must be Wikk,” Hux says. “I’m Hux – an old friend of Trulaw’s.”

“Ah,” the man frowns, then recognition lights up his eyes. “Oh, _Hux_ – you went to school with Alten, didn’t you?”

“Yes, rather a long time ago now.”

Wikk folds his hands together, looking painfully earnest. “Yes, he talks about it sometimes – the academy. It sounds really awful, but he never tells it that way.”

“Trulaw has some eccentric ideas about what constitutes a good time.”

Wikk smiles and looks away, awkward. Not an extrovert then – not like Saff. “Well, I – I have to go. A pleasure to meet you, Hux.”

Hux nods, stands aside to let him past. He enters the living room to find Trulaw staring off into the middle distance. He has lit another cigarra.

“I just met your ex,” Hux says. “He seems… nice.”

“Oh yes, _very_. To a fault, you might say. Still, I don’t know why he can’t just talk to me through his lawyer, like a normal person.”

“Perhaps he likes seeing you.”

Trulaw stares past him, smoke drifting from the cigarra he has yet to put to his lips. “He keeps saying he doesn’t want anything: not money, not the house – not any of the houses. Isn’t that funny? He hasn’t got a credit to his own name, I can’t think why he keeps refusing. He’s perfectly entitled to it. As far as I see, he earned it, free and clear.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t want you to think he married you for your fortune.”

Trulaw waves his hand dismissively, making a twist of smoke hang in the air. “Oh, I know one is obliged to say that, for the sake of propriety. We all must act as if material considerations never enter our pretty little heads. Still though, he’s carrying it a bit far, don’t you think?”

Hux shrugs. “Perhaps he doesn’t really want a divorce.”

“He’s the one who asked for it!” Trulaw seems startled by the volume of his own voice, he blinks rapidly and looks up at Hux. “You’re suggesting what – he was just trying to provoke me?”

“I have no idea, but that’s what Ren does when he wants my attention. Apparently his parents – one of whom was Corellian, by the way – set a very poor example.”

Trulaw laughs, he shakes his head and stubs out the cigarra, untasted. “He’s quite the character, your Kylo. I’d ask who this parent was but I suppose it’s classified.”

“Highly.”

“Well, is he coming down? Should we have breakfast?”

“We have to get going I’m afraid – there’s an itinerary.”

“You can’t go off _unfed_ though,” Trulaw looks more appalled by this than he was by the idea of Hux having obliterated the Hosnian system.

“We have rations on the shuttle.”

Trulaw’s eyebrows rise higher. “You still eat rations?”

“I know. But honestly, my tastebuds withered and died long ago – food that has never been reconstituted or rehydrated just tastes off to me.”

Trulaw tisks as he rises to a standing position and turns to face Hux. “Here,” he takes a cigarra from his top pocket and threads it behind Hux’s ear, “take one for the road.”

They look at each other for a long moment with a sort of open curiosity, taking in the fine lines, the incremental changes that go unnoticed in the self, and those seen every day, but are stark when there has been a long absence. Trulaw leans in and Hux freezes, thinking, inexplicably that the other man is going to kiss him. Trulaw’s hands slide around his back and he presses his long, lean body against Hux’s. It feels different to their rough, boisterous embrace of the previous day: a contact that was largely performative, a statement of alliances and boundaries. Trulaw’s chin rests on his shoulder and he exhales – a soft, final sound – then he pulls back and takes Hux by the upper arms, scrutinizing him closely once more.

“So we’ve made it this far, General. That’s something to celebrate.”

“It is.”

Trulaw hums meditatively. “But remember what Captain Riggs used to say: ‘One day, boys, you’ll go too far.’”

“He did say that,” Hux agrees. Their eyes meet and there is a connection there. A shock runs through them both, racing back through the years; a chain winding in back to that anchor of shared experience. “I never believed him.”


End file.
